Character 10

Mat. 5:6 ... "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

      Most simply stated, "righteousness" is maintaining a right relationship with God, and that can come only through faith in God and obedience to His instructions. This is not saying that righteousness is what you develop through obedience, for righteousness cannot be achieved by anything you do. If it could, then righteousness would be something earned through meritorious service, making it a debt God owes to a person. But God cannot be put into debt to man! The New Testament rather speaks of one "being clothed with the righteousness of Christ," (Rev. 7:12-14). When you put your faith in God as the Supreme Being, the Creator of the Universe, and the Source of life and existence, and then submit to His will revealed in Holy Scripture, Christ confers His rightousness upon you. The expression in Rev. 7:12-14 symbolizes righteousness as a beautiful, elegant robe with which Christ clothes His approved disciple.  It is a robe of His origin and design, available only from Him, and conferred only by Him.

      A najor component of Christian character is, therefore, being deeply concerned about becoming righteous. It must be a constant driving urge within you, similar to the ever present desire for food. A person can eat a full meal to complete satisfaction, and within hours the pressing cry of the body for food returns. Then, the longer the person goes without eating, the greater the hunger builds until the person craves food. This desire and need continues daily throughout life; and if the person does not eventually satisfy that urge, he will die of starvation.  Jesus says in Mat. 5:6 that our desire for right-eousness must be similar to our hunger for food and thirst for water. The need for water is greater than that for food, and the lack of water will lead to death more quickly than starvation without food.

      Righteousness is therefore spiritual food for the soul as much as physical food is for the body.  Everyone on earth hungers for food and thirsts for water to maintain physical life.  But a great part of mankind ignores the soul's need for spiritual food and drink.  The body deprived of food and water will die, and the soul deprived of righeousness will also die. The New Testament often speaks of people who are physically alive but spiritually dead. Those who are righteous, and therefore spiritually alive, are a blessing to the world. They do good, spread benevolence, maintain peace, and build harmonious rela-tionships that continually improve society.  Those who are not righteous and are spiritually dead, are not a blessing to the world. They are the source of dysfunction in society, disturbing the peace and disrupt-ing the general welfare. From those utterly destitute of righteousness come the criminal element, the violent, and those who corrupt morality and thus wreck the lives of many others.

      Righteousness, God's gift to those of faith who respond to His will, is an essential to good character and the welfare of all humanity. It lifts the plane of human life above the common desire to satisfy physical desires, the Epicurean goal to "eat, drink, and be merry." Rightousness sets higher goals than wealth, power, fame, and being served rather than learning the true joy of serving others who for many reasons lack the essentials for a pleasant, meanigful life. Righteousness is NOT walking about detached from the daily struggle of life, with hands together and fingers upward, with eyes lifted to the sky, and the continual verbal emission of the Lord's Prayer, special Scriptures, and "praise Jehovah." That is the world view of the righteous, religiously oriented life. But being truly righteous is what has been des-cribed above, and it is the real hope for the best world here in which to live.

      The popular models of good character that are publicly advocated do not include righteousness as a component, because they are secular and omit religion and spirituality. But the wisdom that transcends the physical dimension in which we live, that is, the wisdom from the spiritual dimension revealed by Christ, advises us that righteousness is an essential component of good character. Without it, any character model is flawed and will not ulitmately succeed.

Character 9

Mat. 5:5-6 ... "Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth."

      In the previous essay in this series, we saw that, in the Beatitudes with which Jesus introduced the Sermon on the Mount, He revealed two essential components of Christian character, humility and sorrowful. The latter is not the common sorrow for life's adversities, but sorrow for the presence of sin that does such enormous damage in human life. In this essay, we shall consider another essential trait of true character. It is presented in the third Beatitude, ""Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth." In its noun form, the term is gentleness. Its presence in a man makes him a gentleman; and in a woman it makes her a lady. In English, the true meaning of these terms has been mostly abandoned.  But in previous generations they were generally understood to refer to the excellence of an individual's character.

      In today's culture, "gentleman" means little more than adult male. It then includes undeserving men who are rude, rough, and bullyish. Likewise, a woman can be trashy, uncouth, and slutty, and still be covered by the word "lady." There are many men these days who are not gentlemen, and a large set of women who are not ladies. In my own working vocabulary, I am careful not to apply these honorable terms to people whom I do not perceive to deserve them. In fact, it seems that the prevailing view of what constitutes real manhood has morphed into this image: A real man is an aggressive competitor, who comes in first in any context no matter what, an obvious "macho." Likewise, girls are no longer trained to be ladies; it is rather the goal to enable them to project as far as possible into the male world as they can go. That is, "If a man can do it, so can a woman!"

      A gentleman is a man who is gentle, for that is the original, basic meaning of the word. He will show tender feelings of kindness, compassion, and grace to all about him. He will not be embarrassed to shed tears in a somber setting, or to hold and comfort a baby, or sit with those who are sick, weak, and lonely. Most of the men I know feel very uncomfortable in this role, because they have been con-ditioned to accept the worldly concept of manhood, not the Christian concept.  When a man does dare to assume such a role, it can become somewhat senational. Recall, e.g., the iconic photo of the fireman carrying in his arms the small child who survived the bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995. That is the picture of a true gentleman!

Character 8

Matt. 5:3-4 ... "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

      In Mat. 5:3-12, at the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus presents eight features of the kind of personality He wants His disciples to have.  He then promises a blessing upon the person who will build these features into his thinking and consequent behavior.  A blessing is paired with each of these features, so that the quality of the person's life is enriched and lifted to a higher plane. A view has developed in the popular explanation of this passage that "blessed" means "happy," and thus it is translated in some recent versions of the New Testament. A more careful examination shows this view to betray the essential idea in Jesus' meaning.  "Happy" is from the root word "hap," which denotes chance and its random nature. But a blessing is not the product of chance; it is a measure of God's grace received. A person who is blessed has a reason to be happy, but a person can be blessed without being happy. Many is the time in a Christian's experience when the roughness of life is stressful and unplea-sant, but God's blessing is still with him, if he perseveres in faith and trust in God's providence. Clouds of trouble often darken the lives of God's people, but He will eventually part the clouds. and the sun-shine of His goodness will bring light and joy.  So, it may be said ... A Christian's life will pass from sorrow and oppression to joy and exaltation, but at all times God's blessings are present. I advise that we not replace Jesus' word "blessed" with the weak and shallow, but very popular term, "happy."

      The character trait that appears in the first beatitude is humility: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." A person who is "poor in spirit" is an humble person who does not put himself before others. He is always concerned about the situation of people around him, especially if they are having difficulty. He does not consider himself to be more worthy, more deserving, and more fitting than others. He recognizes value in everyone, believes they are due consideration, and seeks to find a good place for them in a given context. There are numerous times in Jesus ministry where He is found paying attention to the needs, the pain, and the welfare of people. He reacted to their misery and deprivation by relieving their pain and bringing them into the mainstream of productive, meaningful life experience.

      The character trait in the seond beatitude is sorrow: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." This does not mean being sorrowful about disease, accidents, losses, backsets, and those kinds of afflictions that life deals out to everyone. Jesus speaks of the sorrow one feels because of the great prevalence of sin in the world that is continually devastating the lives of everyone, including one's own life. Because every soul is made in God's image, because one soul is worth more than all the  world, and because a soul is something eternal, one should feel great sorrow that sin constantly invades the soul. It is a spiritual contagion that sickens its victim in the worst way, in the part of his being that exists forever, beginning in this world and continuing through eternity.

      The attitude of the common worldly individual is, "It's every one for himself, and let the devil take the hindermost." This prevailing attitude is the opposite to the character trait revealed in the second beatitude. It is a grievous character flaw.  The further a sinner is removed from us, the less we care about him, and the better we feel because he is at a distance. We rarely look at him with sorrow and  have much concern that his soul is wrecked and headed into a dreadful, hopeless oblivion. Jesus had no sin, and therefore He could not sorrow over sin ruining Him. But the New Testament is replete with examples of the sorrow Jesus had for someone else whose life was being blasted and wasted by the action of sin within him. 

Character 7

In previous articles I have asserted that Christ is the only real model for good character.  By looking to Him in the way He lived and by considering carefully what He taught, we can discern the elements that constitute a good character. In this article, and those remaining on this subject, we will do just that. First, we shall examine a special section of one of His sermons, the one popularly known as the Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 5-6-7). His introduction was a set of blessings He pronounced on the person who will incorporate into his life certain personality traits which He names. Since the word for "bless-ing" in Latin was beatus, and the Latin Vulgate had a great deal of influence on the earliest English translations of the Bible, these statements in Mat. 5:3-12 have for centuries been called the Beatitudes. Actually, these traits are essential components of real character. The emphasis will be upon the specific traits named and not upon the blessing that rewards the person who builds these qualities of spirit into his life. That is the emphasis for another study.

Note the words, "who builds these qualities of spirit into his life." They are not external things that are put on as clothing; they are spiritual things that are introduced into the heart to permeate thought, feel-ing, and perspective and thus reconstitute one's inner being into a far better person, even the best a mortal man can be. Character models that seek only to shape and regulate outward expression really do not produce genuine character. What Jesus teaches in the Beatitudes are to be taken into the heart and refashion it into a person whose inner and outer lives are congruent. (See Pro. 4:23.)

Reputation is often taken to be character, but it is not. Character is what you really are; reputation is what people think you to be. That may be said another way: Character is what God sees when He looks at you; reputation is what people see when they look at you. A person's life is at its best when reputation and character match, but that is seldom the way it is. And the mismatch goes both ways. Sometimes a person's reputation extends no further than his family and a small circle of friends and acquaintances. But he may have an excellent character. Because he is quiet, humble, and unobtrusive, not many people realize the excellence of his character. I have known many such people and considered them to be the solid foundation of their community and church. On the other hand, there are people whose reputation is big and widely known. They project themselves; they want to be seen and heard; they want to be up front of any group they are in. But if you measure them by the canon presented in the New Testament, you discover that, while big on reputation, they have significant deficiencies in character.

When you see people at church, you are only seeing one side of them. If you could see them in their routine at home, at work, in business, and in  public interaction, you might recognize quite a different person than you know at church. There are some people who do know them in both both settings, and they are well-acquainted with their duplicity; but for many reasons, they keep what they know private. But, the lord knows, for His knowledge of man is complete. We are told in Psa. 14:2 that "the Lord [looks] down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there are any who understand [margin: act wisely], who seek after God." A person of good character will have a reputation that matches his char-acter, at least by people who know him in all areas of life.

(* Beginning in the next article we will begin to consider the 8 essentail traits of good character taught by Jesus in the Beatitudes of Mat. 5:3-12).

 

Character 6

       In concluding the previous essay, I made the point that it is not man's place to construct a model of good character, although many have done it and doubtless will continue to do it. In Jer. 10:23, Jehovah through the prophet, stated that "A man's way is not in himself; nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps." In composing these essays on good character, I therefore resisted the urge to draw up a list of personality traits and proclaim, "When these are integrated into one's life, they will develop in that individual a good character." Neither would I assemble such a list from the writings of philosophers, social scientists, and psychologists, which I have often read. What I would do, and it's all I have done, is point to Jesus as the God-given example of good character and encourage everyone to investigate His life and then model yours after Him. After all, that is what we are told to do in I Pet. 2:21, "Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps." The closer a person comes to Jesus' perfect example, the more excellent his character becomes. No one can find a better way, or even one that is comparable.

      In the same context of thought, we are told in Eph. 4:11-13 that God has given us a sure and effec-tual way to bring us to "the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ." The inspired writer might just have said "good character," but instead he used the phrases "mature man" and "measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ." They are, however, synonymous. The words "mature" and "fulness" in this verse refer to the same thing, completeness. Jesus was a complete Man, that is, He possessed a fully developed character, having the substance of God Himself imprinted within Him.

      Let us focus attention for a moment on the word "good" in the phrase "good character." The idea of good is usually considered to be a moral entity in and of itself. But in my own study and insight into the term, I have come to the conclusion that ... something is good if it fulfills whatever God intended for the thing to be and if it contains all that God mean for it to have.  Therefore, a character is good if it makes a person fulfill God's will for an individual and if it contains all that God meant to be there. The passage last considered, Eph. 4:11-13, speaks of "the fulness of Christ." That means that He accomplishmed all that God sent Him to earth to do and that He contained all in His personality that God meant to be there. This has been, and now is, true of no other man. Therefore, Jesus is the ONLY model of good character. Only of Christ does Scripture say that a person should aim to achieve the "measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness" of that person.

      It is indeed proper to make a list of the components of a good character, because it will facilitate the understanding and application of them in one's life. But the list should be drawn from a careful study of Jesus' life as recorded in the New Testament, not from the musings of a philosopher, social scientist, or psychologist. To discover Jesus' attitudes and see how He responded to the varying circumstances of daily life can be accomplished by anyone who will read closely the Four Gospels. As we think about the challenge to develop good character, this is the only course that Christians should think of choosing.

      We have therefore come to the place in these essays where we should start looking at the specific traits of good character. Since the New Testament uses the word only once (in Heb. 1:3), and then in reference to Christ, there is no passage that discusses the subject with direct reference to the word "character." There are, however, several passages that do deal with the subject without using the word and reveal the constituent components we seek. Since Christ is THE model for character, we should expect these passages either to refer to Him or to be the substance of something He taught. In the remainder of these essays two such passages will be considered.

Christian Character 5

Heb, 1:3 ... "He (Jesus) is the radiance of [God's] glory and the exact representation of His nature."

      Please fix your attention on the words "of His nature." They translate the original in Greek, which is upostasewV autou (hupostaseôs autou).  The word upostasewV literally means "reality" or "substance," and in this case refers to the nature of God Himself. When we consider the composition of our bodies, we easily understand that we are made of earthly elements fashioned into flesh and bones and various organs. But what is God composed of? This question would take us far beyond the limit of human capacity. We know that He is not made of material elements, for Jesus said in John 4:24 that "God is spirit." Whatever spirit is (which is God's nature) is what the word upostasewV in Heb. 1:3 refers to; and it says that the character of Jesus perfectly corresponds to it. In other words, character takes shape and is perfected the more the individual is modeled after God. And since John 14:9 says we see God in Christ, the last statement may be rephrased to say: Character is shaped and perfected the more the individual is modeled after Christ.

As I was developing this series of articles, I could have made a list of the qualities that seem to me to constitute and define good character. But I knew that was the wrong way to go about it. It is not my prerogative to make such a decision and bring forth such a list. I believe that no one, not even moral philosophers, have the ability to do it irrefutably. In my study of philosphy, both in university and in private, I have read with interest their various prescriptions for good character. And they are indeed varied, as one rejects the others to replace them with his own.

One example is that of Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his great work called the Nicomachian Ethics. He defines character in terms of what he called "The Golden Mean."

"The qualities of character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a virtue or an excellence. So, between cowardice and rashness is courage; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between sloth and greed is ambition; between humility and pride is modesty; between secrecy and loquacity is honesty; between moroseness and buffoonery is good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery is friendship; and between indecisiveness and impulsiveness is self-control."

This seems quite convincing, and if you read no one but Aristotle, you might think that here is a defi-ition of character that can be used to advantage. The only trouble is, if you consult another philosopher, you find that he rejects both Aristotle and others and constructs his own model of character. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), for example, had this to say about Aristotle and his disciples:

"All these were attempts of the Greeks to check their own violence and impulsiveness of charater; more truly they reflected the Greek feeling that passions are not of themselves vices, but the raw material of both vice and virtue, according as they function in excess and disproportion, or in measure and harmony."

This German philosopher, who was an atheist, constructed his own definition of character. A generation later, Nazi ideologists  applied Nietzschean philosophy, and thus was created the monster that disrupted Europe in the 1930-1945 period. One can have "good character" by the Aristotelian standard, or even "good character" by the Nietzschean standard, and yet have a contemptible personality and lifestyle by the Christtian standard. In future articles, the Christian model of good character will be presented,

Christian Character 4

       Early in His ministry, Jesus chose 12 men to be His apostles. They were probably quite ordinary men, for they were from the common occupations of the time and place and included fishermen and a tax collector. They exhibited human frailties and passions such as we do now and which hinder us from achieving exemplary lives. Here and there in the Four Gospels these human problems make their appearance among these men. So we are much impressed when we read in Acts 4:13, "Now as [the Jewish High Council] observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, [they] began to recognize them as having been with Jesus." Peter and John, formerly simple Galilean fishermen, had not had the advantage of formal training in the rabinic schools of Jerusalem to make them suave, polished men like those before whom they were being tried. But there was something extraordinary about their demeanor that the judges could not help but notice, and the only explanation for it was that they "had been with Jesus."

      For three years Peter, John, and the other apostles had felt the impact of the personality of Christ upon them. That impact had changed them from men who engaged in petty squabbles over rank, who wanted to respond to insult with violence, and who fled their Master in fear in His moment of trial. In short, they had become men of character in the true sense of the word. The impression of Jesus' nature upon them had transformed them into men who wanted to serve others rather than be served, who returned good for evil as a matter of course, and who willingly sacrificed themselves to glorify God. During their time with Jesus they had acquired from Him such qualities as reverence to God, love of truth, purity of mind, courage, self-control, integrity, and all the rest we associate with good character.

    Coming to these qualities that constitute character leads back to Heb. 1:3, where the New Testament, in its solitary use (in Greek) of the word "character," applies it to Jesus. If we are not careful, we will presume to define for ourselves what constitutes character.  As Christians, we should not look to human concensus for such definition, but realize that character is conformity to a high standard that we our-selves do not determine.

      About 25 years ago someone  designed a program called "Character Counts" and promulgated it in schools across the nation. I first became aware of it in August 1999 when it was adopted in the high school where I was a teacher. I was initially enthusiastic about it, because if there is anything we need to instill in our youth, it is good character. It is more lacking in the current generation than it was during the 1990s. But when I looked at the program carefully, I discovered I could not accept the character model it used. It featured one that had been drawn from the human disciplines such as psychology and philosophy. I do not think we can develop our own model, because what might be considered good character by one society would not be judged so by another. Just think of the models used by Nazi Germany, Marxist communism, and radical extremists.

      I was asked by my school in 1999 to introduce in our first teacher in-service the character model to be taught . It was a surprise to many when I rejected the national model and proposed instead the model that has been featured in the New Testament for two housand years.  That is the model centered upon Jesus in what He taught and the kind of life He lived.